Is it possible to highlight the buzzard, and prey?

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I recently took this photo of a buzzard and a rat. Unfortunately the background does not help!! Is it possible improve the view of the bird? If so how do I set about it? I don't have Lightroom or similar, only NX Studio. I shoot in RAW. Thank you
Buzzard with a rat.JPG
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Assuming the software lets you control the curve or at least the parameters such as blacks, shadows, highlights, etc., that might help seperate the similar tones. You could up the contrast slider. In the curve you'd want to find out where in the curve the background fell and make that part steeper. Or if you have sliders you can pull the blacks down and the shadows up, or otherwise try to stretch out the tones so there is more separation in the tones there. Contrast is kind of like a budget though. If you spend more stretching out one part you will have relatively less elsewhere.

If the software has adjustment brushes you can try those, depending on what it lets you do to the selected area
 
I understand what you're getting at. However, a different perspective or take on this scene is: This is how the bird and prey look in the wild. There is a story about life and death in nature that is being told with this image. Both creatures blend well into their environments. That delicate balance between life and death depends on ability to blend into the background and avoid being spotted. The Raptor needs to avoid having the rodent spot it while the rodent needs to avoid having the raptor spot it. One will win and one will lose. This day it was the rodent who lost.

The only thing I would do with this image would be either crop it so that the green leaves in the lower left are gone or clone them out. I find the leaves distracting. I may try to pull back highlights a little bit but that would be a matter of personal taste.

I like the image and the story. Hope this helps.
Jeff
 
I don't know anything about NX, but in Photoshop I'd select the hawk and rat and then adjust things in camera raw filter like texture, clarity, dehaze, vibrance (increasing all of those), possibly change highlights and shadows as needed; then invert the selection, copy the background layer, add a layer mask, and blur the background more with either a gaussian blur or with a combination of lowering contrast, texture, dehaze, and vibrance. You can use the opacity slider to adjust the strength of the layers. A gradient blur might also work well for your photo. That might be a lot to tackle if you are new to Photoshop but it's definitely worth learning from all the free tutorials on Youtube. Photography would really suck for me if I couldn't improve on SOOC.
 
I used Masking in LR, chose "Select Subject", then inverted that and reduced the exposure on the background. Made a second mask, "Select Subject", and tweaked the bird itself a little. I'm sure an expert could do more.

b-1.jpg
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The OP said no lightroom, just NX Studio. So the possibilities for selection are limited. I believe there are control points in that software that limit adjustments to certain areas to control brightness and color. Could possibly help. One thought to try would be to lower the brightness/exposure slider overall then use the control points on the subject only to pull the brightness back to normal just for the subject.
 
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